OS instalation tips?

Hello,

I finaly have most of my carputer hardware and am only waiting on my CPU which is in the mail. Anyway, I will be using an Aopen Pandora with a 1.5ghz celeron, 80 gig HD and 1 gig of ram. Plan on the typical uses of MP3's, DVD playback, GPS, Wifi and possibly a second monitor down the road for the kids in the back. Anyway, I have been doing my homework hardware wise and am just now moving towards OS and Frontend research. Unfortunately, I am not much of a computer guy so I really could use a hand with the research. Once the time comes for the install, I will get help from a friend, since this is the first computer I have built from scratch.

From what I have read, I intend to partition a portion of HD (15 to 20 gig) for OS and various programs and use the remaining for my Data (MP's and movies). I am open to suggestions on other ideas as well. Any file management tips to get in place to organize music and data?

Now on the OS side I am clueless. I see many threads on optimization, streemlined installs of SP2 and much more. Since I am unsure what I need I am unsure where to start. I have both XP home and Pro available for install. Is there a document that walks newbies through a typical stripped down install of XP that is geared towards a car pc application? If i had an idea of where to start, I then can read up and then get a friend to help me.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated? Anyone in the Los Angeles area running either Roadrunner or Centrafuse that would be willing to lend a hand? I live about 40 miles north of LA in Santa Clarita.

I can help you out on the OS side. I hope you can help me out on the car side. That's where I'm a noob.

Your partitioning method is a good idea. Set aside a small system partition and the rest for media. That way, if and when your OS craps out you can just reformat that partition and not loose or need to back your data. Heck, if you are not putting too much applications with your OS 15 gigs may be too big and you can actually make your media partition bigger. It is Windows and Office that takes up a majority of the space along with the patches. I have 15 gigs reserved for my System drive on my gaming rig and I still have 40% free space. If you are going to run a stripped down Windows XP with a few apps like GPS than you can make your 15 gig smaller.

Now if you want to turn off unnecessary services that hog up system resources try looking up blackviper on the internet. I use this chart to disable many uneeded services. Unfortunately for some reason his site has been down for ages: http://blackviper.com/